Parking permits suggested by downtown Wellington residents

Are you a downtown resident whose car has been ticketed after being parked for too long in a public lot?

One resident is asking Wellington officials to make an exception for people who live downtown and use municipal parking.

Stacey Sanders, in a Sept. 4 email to mayor Hans Schneider, asked for relief for those neighbors who must continually move their vehicles and have no other parking options besides the village’s 24- and 72-hour lots.

“Some of us talked and want to propose ‘parking passes’ for the residents that live above the businesses in town,” she wrote. “Some are in disability that have a hard time getting around let alone constantly moving their vehicles. We think it’s a good idea for us and for the town to have some money coming in from this. It can go toward repairing the lots and maintenance.”

Schneider said Sanders and possibly others plan to discuss the issue with village council face-to-face in the near future.

The mayor said reserving parking spaces for residents while sparing room for downtown patrons is a fine line to walk.

He also showed empathy toward Sanders’ plight, saying his own car was towed in the mid-1990s while he was living in an apartment above King Realty.

He said parking passes have been discussed by council in the past and that more people are now living downtown than in prior years.

“Council will have an open mind to these concerns and to a possible solution,” Schneider said. “I don’t see any spots being taken away in front of businesses for permanent parking. That would be detrimental to the downtown business district. We’ve talked about extended parking spaces from time to time.”

Twenty-four-hour lots downtown can be found behind village hall, King Realty, LorMet Community Federal Credit Union, and at the corner of Depot and South Main Streets. A 72-hour lot is located near the Main Street underpass.

Jonathan Delozier can be reached at 440-775-1611 or @DelozierNews on Twitter.